Yahoo to Double Cash Flow in Three Years

Still maintaining that they’re worth way more than $44.6 billion, Yahoo’s recent SEC filing yet again emphasized their belief that their stock is substantially undervalued. Caroline McCarthy reports:

The presentation was first shown to investors in December 2007, prior to Microsoft’s announcement that it planned to acquire Yahoo. But on Tuesday, Yahoo underscored the contents of the presentation as evidence that Microsoft’s unsolicited takeover bid, issued January 31, “substantially undervalues” the company.

The presentation asserts that the company will grow from $1.9 billion to $3.7 billion in three years. Revenue is to grow to $8.8 billion by the end of 2010. The slide showing this growth is titled “Our Plan Significantly Exceeds Street Expectations.” Can we take a moment here for a little chuckle? Of course they’re planning big for themselves; how inspiring would a shareholder presentation be that said “Actually, our stock price is probably overinflated right now”?

As McCarthy points out, the current economic environment of the US is not one for making bold assertions of growth, but Yahoo also emphasizes their strength in foreign markets, especially Asian markets. The slide show also emphasizes that despite some other company’s dominance in search, Yahoo still has a strong chance in display advertising, where they’ll seek to transform the industry with their ad platform. The slide on this projected product touts its:

common hosted platform

unified process (standardizes low-value transactions)

audiences and inventory aggregated across web and

pricing transparency (reducing arbitage)

Yahoo anticipates its display ad platform will make it “fast and easy . . . to launch a web-wide campaign.” Later in the presentation, Yahoo says the display ad platform will be launched in the first half of 2008 (if I’m correct in assuming that’s what “H1 2008″ means).

While having a single centralized platform for display ads would be nice, it seems like there are a lot of companies out there already working on that same thing, and few with notable success. Yahoo’s broad reach may make it a more attractive alternative to other platforms, but it probably won’t be quite enough to improve their fortunes so vastly—if it comes to fruition at all.

Yahoo was one of the first companies with “name” in this business of the internet. And naturaly it must have made some good money in spite of up and downs. It’s just like the major players in the stock market, such as Citi Group, General Electric and 3M. These are what we call barometers and they usually stand through stormy times.
Being a barometer of the internet companies, I believe that Yahoo has a word to say in this competitive market and the know how to adapt itself to new trends and even create them.
I do hope that Yahoo and other companies keep independent to avoid disguised monopoly.